Edward Drinker Cope

A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competition now known as the Bone Wars.

Alfred, an orthodox member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), operated a lucrative shipping business started by his father, Thomas P. Cope, in 1821.

[8] The Copes began teaching their children to read and write while very young, and took Edward on trips across New England and to museums, zoos, and gardens.

[11] Edward's letters home requesting a larger allowance show he was able to manipulate his father, and he was, according to author and Cope biographer Jane Davidson, "a bit of a spoiled brat".

Otherwise, Edward's studies progressed much like a typical boy—he consistently had "less than perfect" or "not quite satisfactory" marks for conduct from his teachers, and did not work hard on his penmanship lessons, which may have contributed to his often-illegible handwriting as an adult.

Instead, Alfred attempted to turn his son into a gentleman farmer, which he considered a wholesome profession that would yield enough profit to lead a comfortable life,[14] and improve the undersized Edward's health.

[16] In 1858, he began working part-time at the Academy of Natural Sciences, reclassifying and cataloguing specimens, and published his first series of research results in January 1859.

Cope attended the University of Pennsylvania in the 1861 and/or 1862 academic years,[18][n 2] studying comparative anatomy under Joseph Leidy, one of the most influential anatomists and paleontologists at the time.

[24] In 1863 and 1864, during the American Civil War, Cope traveled through Europe, taking the opportunity to visit the most esteemed museums and societies of the time.

[27] Biographer and paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn attributed Edward's sudden departure for Europe as a method of keeping him from being drafted into the Civil War.

Friends intervened and stopped Cope from destroying some of his drawings and notes, in what author Url Lanham deemed a "partial suicide".

"[31]: 48  Cope thought of Annie Pim, a member of the Society of Friends, as less a lover than companion, declaring, "her amiability and domestic qualities generally, her capability of taking care of a house, etc., as well as her steady seriousness weigh far more with me than any of the traits which form the theme of poets!"

[34] Cope's return to the United States also marked an expansion of his scientific studies; in 1864, he described several fishes, a whale, and the amphibian Amphibamus grandiceps (his first paleontological contribution).

Due to the time-consuming nature of his Haverford position, Cope had not had time to attend to his farm and had let it out to others, but eventually found he was in need of more money to fuel his scientific habits.

[59][n 4] Cope returned to Europe in August 1878 in response to an invitation to join the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Dublin meeting.

At each gathering, Cope exhibited dinosaur restorations by Philadelphia colleague John A. Ryder and various charts and plates from geological surveys of the 1870s led by Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden.

Reed about a vast boneyard northwest of Laramie in Como Bluff, Marsh sent his agent, Samuel Wendell Williston, to take charge of the digging.

[72] The summer of 1879 took Cope to Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and north to Oregon, where he was amazed at the rich flora and the blueness of the Pacific Ocean.

The period of Cope's and Marsh's paleontological digs in the American West spanned from 1877 to 1892, by which time both men exhausted much of their financial resources.

[77] He continued to travel west, but realized he would not be able to best Marsh in cornering the market for bones; he had to release the collectors he had hired and sell his collections.

[84] Reporter William Hosea Ballou ran the first article on January 12, 1890, in what would become a series of newspaper debates between Marsh, Powell, and Cope.

Cope often prescribed himself medications, including large amounts of morphine, belladonna, and formalin, a substance based on formaldehyde used to preserve specimens.

"[96][31]: 361  Anticipating the quiet, Osborn had brought along a Bible and read an excerpt from the Book of Job, ending by saying, "These are the problems to which our friend devoted his life.

Cope's estate was valued at $75,327, not including additional revenue raised by sales of fossils to the American Museum of Natural History, for a total of $84,600.

[103] Cope was described by zoologist Henry Weed Fowler as "a man of medium height and build, but always impressive with his great energy and activity".

"[104] Cope's affability during visits to the Academy of Natural Sciences to compare specimens was later recalled by his colleague Witmer Stone: "I have often seen him busily engaged in such comparisons, all the while whistling whole passages from grand opera, or else counting the scales on the back of a lizard, while he conversed in a most amusing manner with some small street urchin who had drifted into the museum and was watching in awe with eyes and mouth wide open.

[110] Due to his background in taxonomy and paleontology, Cope focused on evolution in terms of changing structure, rather than emphasizing geography and variation within populations as Darwin had.

[116] The giraffe, for example, stretched its neck to reach taller trees and passed this acquired characteristic to its offspring in a developmental phase that is added to gestation in the womb.

Cope's views on human races and sex were influenced by his Lamarckian beliefs, which posited those of European ancestry as more highly evolved than nonwhite groups.

[120] In his essays on evolution, he assessed the physiognomies of three "sub-species of human" — termed the Negro, the Mongolian, and the Indo-European — in comparison to those of apes and human embryos, and drew the following conclusion:The Indo-European race is then the highest by virtue of the acceleration of growth in the development of the muscles by which the body is maintained in the erect position (extensors of the leg), and in those important elements of beauty, a well-developed nose and beard.

Loose, childish cursive handwriting. At the bottom of the page is a sketch of a whale surfacing from the water. The text reads: "... One came close alongside the vessel. The captain ran and got a harpoon to catch one, but it was too late they had all swam away".
Cope was taken on a sea trip to Boston one week after his seventh birthday. His notebook survives, including this page, and contains notes and drawings of his travels. [ 2 ]
End section of a four-story stone terraced building. Two adjacent doors are at center, each with a short flight of stairs leading up from the street to the first level. Either side of the doors, at left and right, the building has two rounded tower-like sections, each with nine large sash windows (three on each level). Four more large windows are at center, above the doors. The uppermost (attic) level has four smaller windows protruding from the roof with architectural feature. At street level, grilled skylights illuminate basement rooms.
Cope's Pine Street residence
Schools of fish mill around a large sea creature; the animal's long neck twists around itself. Its arrow-shaped head is lined with needle-like teeth that grasp a fish. Its body has four small flippers, which lead back to a shorter tail.
Illustration plate to Cope's 1870 description of several reptiles, including an improperly reconstructed Elasmosaurus (foreground)
Top, side, bottom and close-up views of a fossil skull. The skull has a flat top with a short snout and prominent canines.
Illustration plate from Cope's The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the Far West , featuring the skulls of Canidae from the "John Day Epoch" in Oregon
Bright sunlight coming in through windows in the background show a long narrow room with a Victorian fireplace at left, and light fittings (center) hanging from the ceiling. A desk and chair are at center, with the desk piled high with papers, books and specimen boxes. Another desk, partially seen in the foreground, is similarly cluttered, as is a third desk in the background. Two book cabinets, at right and left, are filled, and have more books piled on top of them to the ceiling. An empty sofa is at right.
Cope's cluttered study in 1897: The Pine Street home was filled with Cope's papers, bones, stuffed and mounted animals, and specimens preserved in alcohol that covered his desks and an improvised shelf in his bathroom. [ 95 ]
Black-and-white photograph of six men standing: All of them are well-dressed in suits and ties. Cope has short hair, mustache, and a small beard; in his hands he holds a wide-brimmed hat and some papers.
One of the last photographs taken of Cope (third from right), during his attendance at the 1896 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Buffalo [ 102 ]